What Maisie Knew

believe me?'

There was something she was already so afraid of that it covered up other fears. 'Didn't you come back to see her?' she enquired in a moment. 'Didn't you come back because you always want to so much?'

He received her enquiry as he had received her doubt—with an extraordinary absence of resentment. 'I can imagine of course why you think that. But it doesn't explain my doing what I have. It was, as I said to you just now at the inn, really and truly you I wanted to see.'

She felt an instant as she used to feel when, in the back garden at her mother's, she took from him the highest push of a swing—high, high, high—that he had had put there for her pleasure and that had finally broken down under the weight and the extravagant patronage of the cook. 'Well, that's beautiful. But to see me, you mean, and go away again?'

'My going away again is just the point. I can't tell yet—it all depends.'

'On Mrs. Beale?' Maisie asked. 'She won't go away.' He finished emptying his coffee-cup and then, when he had put it down, leaned back in his chair, where she could see that he smiled on her. This only added to her idea that he was in trouble, that he was turning somehow in his pain and trying different things. He continued to smile and she went on: 'Don't you know that?'

'Yes, I may as well confess to you that as much as that I do know. She won't go away. She'll stay.'

'She'll stay. She'll stay,' Maisie repeated.

'Just so. Won't you have some more coffee?'

'Yes, please.'

'And another buttered roll?'

'Yes, please.'

He signed to the hovering waiter, who arrived with the shining spout of plenty in either hand and with the friendliest interest in mademoiselle. 'Les tartines sont la.' Their cups were replenished and, while he watched almost musingly the bubbles in the fragrant mixture, 'Just so—just so,' Sir Claude said again and again. 'It's awfully awkward!' he exclaimed when the waiter had gone.

'That she won't go?'

'Well—everything! Well, well, well!' But he pulled himself together; he began again to eat. 'I came back to ask you something. That's what I came back for.'

'I know what you want to ask me,' Maisie said.

'Are you very sure?'

'I'm almost very.'

'Well then risk it. You mustn't make me risk everything.'

She was struck with the force of this. 'You want to know if I should be happy with them.'

'With those two ladies only? No, no, old man: vous n'y etes pas. So now—there!' Sir Claude laughed.

'Well then what is it?'

The next minute, instead of telling her what it was, he laid his hand across the table on her own and held her as if under the prompting of a thought. 'Mrs. Wix would stay with her?'

'Without you? Oh yes—now.'

'On account, as you just intimated, of Mrs. Beale's changed manner?'

Maisie, with her sense of responsibility, weighed both Mrs. Beale's changed manner and Mrs. Wix's human weakness. 'I think she talked her round.'

Sir Claude thought a moment. 'Ah poor dear!'

'Do you mean Mrs. Beale?'

'Oh no—Mrs. Wix.'

'She likes being talked round—treated like any one else. Oh she likes great politeness,' Maisie expatiated. 'It affects her very much.'

Sir Claude, to her surprise, demurred a little to this. 'Very much—up to a certain point.'

'Oh up to any point!' Maisie returned with emphasis.

'Well, haven't I been polite to her?'

'Lovely—and she perfectly worships you.'

'Then, my dear child, why can't she let me alone?'—this time Sir Claude unmistakeably blushed. Before Maisie, however, could answer his question, which would indeed have taken her long, he went on in another tone: 'Mrs. Beale thinks she has probably quite broken her down. But she hasn't.'

Though he spoke as if he were sure, Maisie was strong in the impression she had just uttered and that she now again produced. 'She has talked her round.'

'Ah yes; round to herself, but not round to me.'

Oh she couldn't bear to hear him say that! 'To you? Don't you really believe how she loves you?'

Sir Claude examined his belief. 'Of course I know she's wonderful.'